Abstract
This chapter is going to see how the opposite pairs are used in constructions from bi-syllabic to quad-syllabic.
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Notes
- 1.
The examples here are for Modern Chinese. 吞吐 in ancient Chinese can also be used as a verb, for example, 吞吐百川 tun1/swallow tu3/spit bai3/hundred chuan1/river “to take and spit hundreds of rivers” (Bao Zhao, Southern Dynasty, “Deng Dalei An YU Mei Shu”), or as a noun 吞吐之术 tun1/swallow tu3/spit zhi1/ZHI shu4/method “(for Taoism) regulating respiration”, or used as 吞吞吐吐, like in 言词吞吐 yan2/speak ci2/wordtun1/swallow tu3/spit “to speak humming and hawing” (Mao Jing, Ming Dynasty, “Jiao Pa Ji”).
- 2.
In Taiwanese Chinese, it is more common to say 里外里面li3/inside wai4/outside li3mian4/inside “totally”.
- 3.
Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, by Alexandire Dumas, 1844.
- 4.
Jinyong 1955 (2002), translated by Graham Earnshaw, The Book & The Sword, Oxford Publisher, 2005.
- 5.
It is also common to say 夜以继日 ye4/nigh yi3/for ji4/continue ri4/day, and the usage and meaning of the two are actually the same.
- 6.
There are numerous works on Chinese word classes. In order to be consistent, our studying adopts the one used by Sinica Corpus (CKIP 1993; Huang et al. 2008). In which, ‘A.’ refers to ‘Non-predicativeadjective’ (非谓形容词), ‘N.’ refers to noun (体词), ‘V.’ refers to verb (述词).
- 7.
Refer to Wenzi (《文子》), Shizi (《尸子》), Sancang (《三苍》), among others.
- 8.
Zheng1gao1qiang3di1 is a partially-directed compound. The meaning of qiang3di1, ‘to rob for lowness’, is not accepted and therefore it is ignored. The real meaning of the compound is still ‘to fight for being higher (or, better position)’, which is the same as zheng1gao1di1.
- 9.
Because of the limitation of time and knowledge, this paper only considers the tone of each word when it is pronounced alone in modern Chinese. The tonal modification, which means the influence by neighboring words or the possible change in actual speaking, is not considered. From the aspect of historical linguistics, it is also important to keep in mind that pronunciation changes with time, so the tone of certain words in modern Chinese do not represent their tones in ancient time. That kind of change, however, is not discussed in this paper but is definitely interesting for study.
- 10.
Ding and Huang (2014) compute 84 compounds in this category. However, our latter examination shows, there are only 82 cases. The cases of 冷热 leng3/cold re4/hot and 苦乐 ku3/bitter le4/happy are wrongly accounted as the ones against both Pollyanna Principle and prosodic principle. Therefore, the total number should be 82.
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Ding, J. (2018). Opposites in Constructions. In: A Lexical Semantic Study of Chinese Opposites. Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics, vol 1. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6184-4_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6184-4_3
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